Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, this is the third of three regulations in the same vein. We have heard today about the process. We have heard today about the fact that California and those who opt in are still a minority of the States and a minority of the U.S. population. Yet, they are dictating in many ways to the rest of the country because of the oversized import of the California economy, et cetera. The bottom line is that my colleagues have said in the last few minutes that this is somehow a States' rights issues. This is not a States' rights issue. This is the creation of a superstate: California. We have the right to override the waiver granted to them that gives them outsized weight in relationship to vehicles. In this case, it is the diesel vehicles. It is the trucks. That being said, no one State should have this much power. The waiver should not have been granted in the first place. It is a waiver of a regulation, which makes it a regulation in effect, no matter what it is called. It is a waiver of a regulation. Therefore, it is something that the Federal Government should be dictating, as you heard my colleague from California say. It should not be granting so many waivers. We heard one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that--I forget the number of years it had been, and I am paraphrasing--California had ratcheted up these regulations on various things over 100 times using various waivers.…”